Beer pong is a drinking game that has risen in popularity in recent years.
Beer pong is played in basically two versions, beer pong played by hand, also known as “Beirut”, and beer pong played with paddles. While both of these versions have a wide variety of rules, the basic set up of the game consists of two (2) teams of two-to-four-player each on opposing sides of a flat table. The game may be played on any suitable flat surface, but the preferred playing surfaces are rectangular tables, such as door, dining, folding banquet tables or boards cut in a rectangular shape. Various table sizes are usually 2 to 4 feet in width, 7 to 10 feet in length and 2.5 to 4 feet in height.
On both edges of the game table, cups are placed in one of many various formations in front of each team. The triangle formation is usually the most popular. Each of these cups contains a beverage, usually beer or water (water pong), however, other beverages, such as cocktails (tails pong) and champagne (champong), have started to emerge in use.
Game play consists of each team taking alternating turns to throw or paddle 38 mm or 40 mm table tennis (ping pong) balls across the table, from behind their respective cup formations, with the intent of landing the ball into one of the opposing team's cups.
Once a team lands a ping pong ball into an opposing team's cup, one member of that opposing team must usually drink the beverage contained within the cup and remove the cup from their formation. The game is lost by the first team that drinks and removes all their cups from the table.
The version of beer pong played with paddles usually results in much less ping pong balls landing in the cups (known as a “sink” in that version of the game).
During game play, many ping pong balls miss the cups or ricochet off cups, the table or other players onto the surrounding floor. This floor may be dirty and filled with contaminants. Since these dirty ping pong balls will likely come into contact with a beverage to be consumed during remaining game play, each team usually has a separate cup of water, known as a “wash cup”, to rinse off a ping pong ball after it hits the floor.
This method of cleaning the ping pong balls is inefficient and often ineffective as the wash cups become dirty and contaminated from repeated contact with dirty ping pong balls as the game progresses. In addition, research has shown that the wash cups still hold bacteria, such as E. coli. The supposed cleaning effects of the wash cup may be offset by the presence of bacteria.
Previous solutions to this problem include changing the wash cup frequently during game play with a fresh cup and water or changing ping pong balls that have hit the floor with new balls. These solutions substantially slow down game play and require many fresh ping pong balls to be effective. Another solution is for players to drink from beverage containers other than the cups used in game play. This solution creates uncertainly in the amounts consumed during game play and requires players to keep additional beverage containers close to the game table.
Accordingly, a need exists for a cheap, easy to manufacture and an easy to use system that prevents ping pong balls from hitting the surrounding floor during game play. This system should be easy and quick to install over the variety of tables used in game play. The system should be easy to remove and clean.